Fortran, probably
Alive and… well alive in scientific computing
Your mom
Caring about your employees as if they were humans.
Caring about other people in general really
Hi, number! It’s your colleague: Another number!
So how about that SPORTING EVENT last weekend?
Something something ludicrous display.
As if! 😂
That implies it was ever the norm. At best it’s had moments.
Your caveman brain. People think they’re educated an enlightened and everything they do now is so well thought out. Nope, the caveman is in the driving seat for all of us. Even your most high level meetings and interviews are influenced by how hungry, horny, or hurt you are by a teasing comment yesterday. Everyone is looking to establish dominance at any cost, when you don’t really need to.
Everyone is looking to establish dominance at any cost, when you don’t really need to.
You know, I see the rest, but I don’t see this. A lot of people are straight-up doormats.
Pretty much anything in a machine shop made in the last 80 years or so. So many people turn up their noses at anything that isn’t computer controlled anymore. Yknow what a big old mill can do that a CNC can’t? It can make every single part needed to make a new mill. It’s a self replicating machine with the right know how. People don’t respect that kind of quality anymore.
I don’t think a mill can make the copper windings in the motor and isolate them. Same with the power cable.
You don’t need an electric motor. You just need enough spin. I’ve seen old mills and lathes that run on steam. An electric motor just happens to be very convenient with our current technology.
Can a CNC not do that for just the mechanical parts?
I know way too much about bootstrapping semiconductor production, which is viable but highly impractical.
Sure, but it’s not as impressive (imo) when you also need a computer control system, a bunch of circuitry and electronics, and a whole mess of software to make it work in the end. A mill just needs enough spin and it runs exactly as intended.
Oh yeah, I have a copy of the Gingery books and I love it.
Gingery never really goes into how much power you need exactly, or what blend of RPM vs. torque is ideal. What would be your guess, since it sounds like you might know?
Torque is the real limiting factor. You can always gear up or down for whatever you’re working on, but at the end of the day you need enough torque to get the work done. And a proper milling machine needs A LOT of torque.
Can you give me some typical values, maybe? That would be a big help.
There are no “typical values” when you’re running a mill or lathe. You could look up “speeds and feeds”, but that’s really just a table that you plug into an equation to figure out how to set the machine. It all depends on what you’re doing and what you’re doing it with. Drilling a hole with a high speed steel drill bit is going to be a bit different than drilling it with a carbide spade, and all that is going to depend heavily on whether you’re trying to run through titanium or tin. You need to fine tune running “x” bit through “y” material for a “z” sized cut.
Essentially, this is the knowledge that separates skilled labor from manual labor, and machining is (was, RIP cnc button pushers) skilled labor.
At the end of the day for most metal machining you’ll need between 50hp and 100hp to be up to modern standards. If you want to get that through steam or electric motors or whatever that’s up to you
Thanks, that’s really helpful. I suppose it makes sense that not just material but cut size and bit would matter. They usually focus just on the geometry on YouTube.
Out of curiosity, what’s the lowest you’ve ever gone? It’s hard to picture machining happening at something like 60RPM.
If you want to get that through steam or electric motors or whatever that’s up to you
Since I’m interested in technological bootstrapping more generally, I think most about water wheels, actually! Steam engines need to be machined, which is a chicken-and-egg problem (or I guess crafted freehand to a machining-like precision, like Vaucanson’s lathe). Electric motors don’t necessarily, but they need a source of electricity, and that’s either a lot of batteries or another rotating power source, which again doesn’t solve the problem.
Waterwheels can be made with hand tools - maybe even primitive tools - and can achieve surprisingly modern efficiency and power density. They do require the right topography, but then again they spin indefinitely without needing to be fueled. 50hp is still a sizable wheel, near the top of what existed in pre-modern times, but I’m guessing you can do basic things with an underpowered machine.
Fax machines. Phone lines are pretty private, and sending a fax is usually more secure than emailing something, especially if someone else manages your email.
Also all of german bureaucracy still works only with fax
Japan as well
It somehow suprises me but also not really thinking how traditionalist they are
They say that in Japan, they live in the year 2000, but have done so since about 1970.
Parts of Canada as well. Our province is terrible for this.
Counterpoint, fax is not encrypted and wire taps are very easy. At least e-mail can be encrypted so Joe shmoe on the street can’t see it.
Besides, all faxing these days is going through VOIP and computers anyways.
Having to physically wire tap the phone line is a lot more difficult and requires local bad actors. Email’s exposure to the internet makes it easier to hack. Yes, email can be encrypted, but if your server is compromised, that doesn’t matter. End to end encryption for email is much harder, and isn’t really used by any institutions (and usually can’t be because of data retention regulations), so the server has complete access to the unencrypted email in almost all cases. Compromising a fax machine that isn’t connected to the internet is a lot harder.
Not all faxes go through VoIP. Your everyday home fax machine probably uses VoIP, because having a landline installed in your home is stupid expensive and unnecessary, but faxes in institutions probably use the PSTN. These institutions most likely need landlines anyway, so having a dedicated fax line makes a lot more sense.
And if a fax goes through VoIP, it’ll be encrypted the same way email is. So in that case, it’s the same level of security as email, which is to say, easier to compromise. At least you can’t trick someone into clicking a link in a fax though.
you can choose whatever email provider you trust, and then they apply encryption on the transport level. but there is often very few phone companies, and zero encryption. they don’t have to install any kind of wiretaps, they can just record everything automatically that passes through
Proton mail is encrypted on the server with your key and proton does not have access to it. If you lose your login credentials and have to reset then you lose your old email because that key is not getting recovered.
The email comes into their server unencrypted. They promise that they will encrypt it for you, though. Of course, you’re also relying on the sending server to keep the message secure as well.
Proton Mail’s end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption ensure only you can see your emails. Not even Proton can view the content of your emails and attachments.
The vast majority of senders do not send email using end to end encryption. If you’re sending an email from a PM address to another PM address, sure, it’s end to end encrypted. If you’re sending to another service, it’s not end to end encrypted unless you’ve both gone through the painful steps of setting up PGP encryption. Same as if you’re receiving from another service.
You can read about it here:
https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained
So that quote you just responded with is saying exactly what I had just said above it. They promise that they’ll encrypt that unencrypted email that just came into their server for you. And they promise that they’ll encrypt that unencrypted email you just sent outside their service.
I know, but I was answering the question about encryption, rather than users. Proton also allows sending encrypted to non participating receivers. They get a weblink and have to open it to view the email a with password if supplied. That decrypts the email at the browser, and has an expiry time on the link.
Secure fax is encrypted: it’s sent via https.
Thats just scan to email with extra steps
I’d say vinyl. Looks like a thing from the 60s but it’s still pretty relevant today
I put vinyl siding on my house 15 years ago. Still looks brand new. Vinyl is here to stay.
I want tot go one further and say music cassettes. Love their sound and way more compact than vinyl. Sadly, there’s no good new hardware being made at the moment, although I really like my We Are Rewind player, it’s far from HiFi.
Nah, gotta got vinyl because cassettes deteriorate just sitting in their cases while vinyl stays pristine … until you actually play it, anyway – but if you want to store an audio recording for longevity, press a gold version of a vinyl album.
With both, it also matters how you store it. But like I said, (modern) cassettes are not for HiFi. If I really want to immerse myself in a record, I need the vinyl. The whole experience is just so much fun.
Paper; Notebooks. Key only physical door locks. Manual transmission cars. Not having any IoT appliances, and not connecting everything you own to WiFi. Hard drive full of MP3s. Cash. Not being available for a call if you’re not at home.
Source: work tangential enough to cybersecurity.
Cash
I heard of some drug dealers not accepting cash where I live
What are they taking? Monero? Gift cards?
Cashapp I’d assume.
Lol, might as well hang a sign out front that says “I share data with cops.”
It’s almost like they didn’t get any training before they became drug dealers. /s
I’m sure they have a group chat, right?
“Guys, how much are you selling your yay for these days? I’ve had negative feedback from three people now about prices. I can handle these bad Yelp reviews.”
\_( ツ )_/
Now hold on, maybe they’re onto something. The highest levels of drug dealers most likely aren’t accepting cash, they’re laundering their money through legitimate fronts. Small time dealers setting up some simple LLC or something for a relatively small fee and funneling money through that could actually shield you better from local law enforcement. I’m pretty sure Cashapp and their ilk offer business accounts nowadays, haven’t checked myself.
Block, the company that owns Cash App, lost a court case and had to pay an $80m fine for failing to adhere to anti-money laundering laws. The Feds have been all over it for a year. Maybe 3 years ago it was possible to fake the KYC, but not a much so anymore.
The only truly non-tracable financial system is Monero, and many exchanges won’t touch it because it has such a close connection to crime.
Marijuana is legal here. Dispensaries can ONLY accept cash, because they’re locked out of the federal banking system.
I think some states are offering workarounds for that dilemma now, but I really do wish the US federal would just legalize it already. We have 24 states that have already legalized it, as well as 3 territories and D.C… Around 33 states have for medical purposes.
When 2/3 of a country has legalized something in some form, it should become the de facto law of the land at the federal level. Those other states can continue keeping it illegal if their citizens so choose, but the Federal government should be forced to at least decriminalize it if it’s something that isn’t directly harming people against their will.
Hard drive full of MP3s is love, hard drive full of MP3s is life.
Although ATM my folder is just 1.1GB including the music videos, so I could probably store it on a thumb drive or carefully-chosen dishwasher; it doesn’t have to be a hard drive.
Tape drives. Remember those big reels of tape on mainframes in the 80s? They don’t look exactly like that anymore, but tape is still used for backups/long term archival because they offer the lowest cost per gigabyte and decent longevity without needing to be powered, as long as you don’t need to access the data all that fast or often.
Those dank memes and cat videos you posted in 2010 are probably on tape in a data centre somewhere
Tape is rad for long term storage
Tape itself is cheap, but buying the other equipment for it costs a fortune.
Im obsessed with tape storage, but for audio. Nothing more real than audio on tape! Luckily it’s catching on again. Music is so disposable now, I hope we can keep physical formats alive and keep corporations away from it (digital offers them unlimited control over us).
Can you drop some tape player recs to save me on tape spaghetti?
Oh sorry, I meant more reel tape not really casettes, but I love the otari mx5050, and the teac 2340sx. Good machines and 1/4" tape is still affordable. PM me if you’d like more tape info, I love to share.
Ah okay haha. Ive been buying vinyls lately and there’s a lot of people with casette merch too. I didnt remember tape being that amazing but was willing to give it a shot. I don’t have reel to reel space at my place unfortunately. Thanks for putting it out there though!
I love Technology Connections
Fax machines. Government and medical offices would grind to a halt without them. That’s just reality.
That’s basically the answer to the opposite question: what is something that someone thinks isn’t obsolete, but really is?
Even worse, the US military, at least, is still using teletype machines and COBOL.
Because it can do something that the alternatives can’t do or because they refuse to use something more modern?
“It can’t be hacked”
Of course, it can, and a lot more easily than a TLS stream, but try convincing them of that. So, more like they refuse to use something more modern.
I always thought email was more secure if it was encrypted. I also don’t understand the difference between a virtual fax (sent as a scan, from the computer, via a phone number but literally just some kinda email like thing) or from a low tech low res scan over the phone line that likely is a voip line anyway. I don’t even know the finer details of how those work, but the differences seem pretty minute to someone just staring at the parts.
Yes, email isn’t actually less transparent. If you’re using webmail over HTTPS it’s harder for a small adversary to intercept, but that’s it. Fax is way less efficient, though, while having no advantages I can think of.
Everyone even tangentially related to healthcare is terrified of violating HIPAA in a way that leaves evidence that can be traced back to them. So the corps force dumb shit like this, while the employees are perfectly happy to tell all kinds of private health information to anyone who will listen. Especially if it’s funny or gross.
Believe it or not, Canadian health services do this shit too.
Because it works. Every part needed to run those machines, even line of code, every possible cause of failure is well documented and there are layers and layers of redundant protocol to ensure that if something does go wrong downtime is minimal.
The entire purpose of these machines are designed to run for as long as they’re needed. They’re not replaced or upgraded because they were never meant to be. A lot of effort went into this being the case.
Came to say this. Fax just refuses to die.
Guillotines
NATO according to the previous article
IRC
I want to throw a shout out to the site that cloned the old Google reader by making theoldreader.com
Thanks for this, I was so disappointed when Google cancelled Reader.
